David Sheridan, MD, MCR, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine

Dr. Sheridan is fellowship trained in pediatric emergency medicine. He is a pediatric emergency physician and a physician-scientist in the Oregon Health & Science University Department of Emergency Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. In addition to clinical training, he earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Research (MCR), which provided coursework in epidemiology, biostatistics, clinical trial design, implementation science, and data analysis. During fellowship, he was awarded the OHSU Department of Pediatrics 2016 Outstanding Research by a Pediatric Fellow Award. The following year, he was recognized nationally receiving the 2017 Ludwig-Seidel Award for the Best Research by a Pediatric Emergency Fellow from the Academic Pediatric Association. His research includes over 30 peer-reviewed publications on the prevalence of disease, development of new technology, evaluation of new interventions, observational research, and randomized controlled trials.

Dr. Sheridan’s research focuses on adolescent suicidality. In particular, he is interested in developing novel technology to improve outpatient suicidal monitoring to improve detection and early intervention to decrease emergency department (ED) utilization and suicide attempts. In his K12 project, he is conducting a prospective, observational trial in acutely suicidal adolescents presenting to the ED to evaluate the ability of non-invasive physiologic measures to correlate with worsening stress dysregulation that can be a trigger for suicidal thoughts/behaviors. The study monitors adolescents in the outpatient setting (following discharge from the ED) to facilitate earlier identification of worsening suicidality that would allow timely therapeutic interventions. His K12 award follows an initial pilot study that prospectively enrolled adolescents presenting to the ED with suicidal ideation and tracking physiologic measures using wearable devices.

Dr. Sheridan serves as the Co-Director of IDEA-EM (Innovative, Disruptive and Emerging Applications for Emergency Medicine) in the OHSU department of emergency medicine. This section aims to develop novel technology applicable to various areas within emergency medicine/critical care. His overall goal with this experience and his K12 is to improve the way adolescent mental health escalation is detected in patients with known depression/suicidal thoughts with wearable technology that is common in everyday life and already being worn. This would hopefully decrease the mental health stigma and requirement of patients to seek help in times of acute crisis and allow early detection before that impulsive crisis is at its worst. 

Mentors: Bonnie Nagel PhD, Larisa Tereshchenko PhD, Aditi Martin PhD, Craig Newgard MD, Cynthia Morris PhD

1. Sheridan JS, Sheridan DC, Johnson K, Marshall R. Can't we just get some help?: providing innovative care to children in acute psychiatric crisis. Health Soc Work. 2017 Aug 1;42(3):177-182.
2. Sheridan DC, Hendrickson RG, Lin A, Fu R, Horowitz BZ. Adolescent suicidal ingestion: trends over a decade. J Adolesc Health. 2017 Feb;60(2):191-195.
3. Sheridan DC, Sheridan JS, Johnson KP, Laurie A, Knapper A, Fu R, Appy S, Hansen ML. The effect of a dedicated psychiatric team to pediatric emergency mental health care. J Emerg Med. 2016 Mar;50(3):e121-8
4. Sheridan DC, Spiro DM, Fu R, Johnson KP, Sheridan JS, Oue A, Wang W, Van Nes R, Hansen ML. Mental health utilization in a pediatric emergency department. Pediatr Emerg Care. 2015 Aug;31(8):555-9
5. Sheridan DC, Ma OJ, Hansen MH. Emergency Physicians can be Leaders in Clinical Innovation: Tips to JumpStart the Engine. Am J Emerg Med. 2018 Oct 20.